Land of Odin

DESCRIPTION: "In the land of Oden/Odin There stands a mountain Ten thousand miles in the air...." Every (thousand) years a little bird sharpens its beak there. "And when that mountain Has worn away This to eternity will be, But one single day."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 2014 (Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs)
KEYWORDS: bird campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 309, "Land of Odin"/"In the Land of Olden" (notes only)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Land of Oden
NOTES [567 words]: According to the mudcat.org thread "Tune Req: Land of Odin/Oden," the origin of this was Hendrik Willem van Loon's 1922 volume History of Mankind, in which "High in the North in a land called Svithjod [Svíþjóð=Sweden] there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed."
This is Thompson motif H701.1, "How many seconds in eternity? A bird carries a grain of sand from a mountain" until it is worn down. This often occurs in Thompson tale type 922, in which a wise boy (or commoner) answers a king's questions. This is the theme, e.g., of "King John and the Bishop" [Child 45], but the king's questions in that song do not include the amount of time in eternity.
Much closer to this song, among versions accessible in English, is Grimm Fairy Tale #152, "The Shepherd Boy" or "The Little Shepherd Boy." The boy is famous for wisdom, so the king calls him to ask him tough questions. The third of the king's questions is "How many seconds in eternity" or similar. The shepherd boy answers "The Diamond Mountain is in Lower Pomerania, and it takes an hour to climb it, an hour to go around it, and an hour to go down into it. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed" (Grimm/Zipes, p. 509).
The motif is also found in the Welsh Mabinogion, in the Tale of Culhwych and Olwen. This is a tale in which many quests must be achieved for Culhwych to win his bride. In the Mabinogion/Guest translation, it's p. 246, about two-thirds of the way through the story:
"They went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri. And Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, 'tell me if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the wall.' And the Ousel answered, 'When I first came here, there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird; and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if during all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you inquire.'" (In Mabinogion/Gantz, p. 164, it's the ousel of Kilgwri; Mabinogion/Davies, p. 203, it's the blackbird of Cilgwri, which Davies, p. 272, thinks is on the Wirral Peninsula.)
This ancient bird is also mentioned in Welsh Triad #92, the Three Elders of the World; Bromwich, p. 235, uses the translation "blackbird" just as Davies does, and suggests on p. 236 that there must have been "a body of folklore about the oldest animals." And she finds (p. 237) Indian and Persian parallels, hinted at also by Thompson. But I have not seen these, and I strongly doubt they have anything to do with this song.
The concept of a thousand years or more being a single day is from the New Testament, 2 Peter 3:8: "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (KJV). Psalm 90:4 also has a bit of this idea "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." - RBW
Bibliography

Bromwich: Rachel Bromwich, editor, Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, fourth edition [posthumous, with a new preface by Morfydd E. Owen], University of Wales Press, 2014
Grimm/Zipes: [Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm], The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and with an introduction by Jack Zipes, Bantam Book, 1987
Mabinogion/Davies: The Mabinogion, translated [from Welsh] by Sioned Davies, 2007 (I use the 2008 Oxford University Press paperback)
Mabinogion/Gantz: The Mabionogion, translated [from Welsh] by Jeffrey Gantz, Penguin, 1976
Mabinogion/Guest: The Mabinogion, translated (from Welsh) by Lady Charlotte Guest. There are many, many editions of this; I use the John Jones Cardiff Limited edition (1977) facsimil of the 1877 Bernard Quaritch edition

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